


The Magnetic North of his Universe

by iwaizumemes (skytramp)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Death, Getting Together, Hospitalization, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-22 23:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4854659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skytramp/pseuds/iwaizumemes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <br/>
    <i>Somehow the weight of Tooru’s universe had realigned. Everything drew him towards Sugawara, his new center, this weirdly shining sun of a human being.</i>
    <br/>
  </p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	The Magnetic North of his Universe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Paltita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paltita/gifts).



> BIG HUGE HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JEANNETTE!!!
> 
> I never would have written something this sad if I didn't know you wanted it. I hope you enjoy it, and I guess I hope other masochists out there enjoy it too.

There was a part of Tooru wished that, for just the past few months, time could run backwards. Everything would make more sense, just to start at the end and flow softly upstream towards the beginning.

If he started near the end, and went back, Suga would never have to die.

__

It was the spring, or technically it was still winter, of their final year in high school. March 12th, a date that Tooru had written in a note on his phone, it seemed significant, it felt like it should be remembered. They didn't know each other, strictly speaking. They weren't even rivals. The tournaments were done with, and Tooru knew Sugawara hadn't gotten many chances to truly play against him, not with senpais starting in their first two years, and Tobio-chan taking his spot in the third.

No, it was a chance encounter at a park of all places, where they truly met. Takeru was anxious, jumpy and hyper and Tooru had let him drag them both to the closest park while Tooru's sister had tea with their mother. He didn't mind, really, it was a nice day outside and studying for University exams twenty four hours a day was giving him a headache that didn't seem likely to go away until sometime in August.

The boy with the windswept hair and the long blue scarf didn't catch Tooru's eye until the girl in his arms squealed so loudly that it rang throughout the park. Sugawara Koushi, looking chilly despite the weather, squatted down and sat the girl on her feet in front of him before saying something too quiet for Tooru to hear.

The girl stopped crying as quickly as she started, and Tooru sat back on his bench watching when she walked as fast as her little legs would take her towards the jungle gym that Takeru was climbing over. He was half surprised to see Sugawara head towards the same bench and take a seat beside him, and wholly surprised when the boy spoke.

"Hello Oikawa-san," he said. He didn't turn his head away from watching the small girl where she now sat in the sand, he couldn't even see how Tooru's eyebrows raised.

"Sugawara-san, what a surprise to see you here."

"My aunt lives nearby, I'm helping her out by babysitting my cousin." Some coincidences were larger than other coincidences, and Tooru thanked every god he could remember for the string of scattered fates that brought them both to that park bench.

___

Three months. 

It was only three months and somehow the weight of Tooru’s universe had realigned. Everything drew him towards Sugawara, his new center, this weirdly shining sun of a human being. Part of him understood it was unhealthy, to put all your eggs in one basket, to cling to steadily to a person that could get tired of him, or have better things to do. He’d done it before, and Iwaizumi was still his best friend, though the growing separation from University had changed their relationship. 

It wasn’t healthy, but it didn’t stop him from calling Sugawara to meet up during every free moment. He told himself the boy wouldn’t say yes so often if he wasn’t just as interested, that he could have pulled away the first time Tooru kissed him, but he hadn’t. 

Things weren’t always easy, but the way their hands fit together certainly was. Sugawara’s head seemed made for the soft hollow of Tooru’s shoulder, their smiles aligned, near perfect mirrors until they touched in a kiss, their laughs echoed and filled every room they were in. 

__

“Do you ever think about mortality?” Suga asked him, snuggling into the small space between Tooru’s side and the back of the couch. The couch was too short, of course, and both of them had their legs propped up and hanging over the opposite end. Tooru’s neck was crooked against the arm of the couch and a pillow. 

The question caught him off guard. “What, Suga-chan? Like dying? I try not to think about stuff like that.” The sun was low in the sky, and came through the window in deep orange rays, reflecting off the television and painting the walls with color. 

“It happens though, you can’t just ignore everything you don’t like about the world.” Suga’s voice was soft, like usual, but there was steel there too, the type of strong backbone to his words that Tooru had learned quickly meant he was serious. Tooru ran his thumb over Suga’s hand where they held. 

“I don’t ignore everything I don’t like. Sometimes I mock things.” Suga laughed, but it was strained and Tooru pulled him impossibly closer. “What brought this on, anyway, did something happen?” 

“It’s nothing, really. I was just thinking.” It sounded like a ridiculous excuse, the more Tooru thought back on it, but he hadn’t questioned it at the time. Suga was a thinker, as much as Tooru was, even more-so, nothing seemed amiss. 

Tooru bent up slightly to kiss Suga’s forehead where it laid against his chest. “Okay, Suga-chan, if you say so.”

___

Three weeks later Suga was admitted to the hospital. It was stupid, really, he’d only sprained his ankle but the swelling refused to go down, and the bruising spread almost all the way to his knee. It looked terrible, and Tooru carried him from the car to the waiting room. 

The Emergency receptionist directed them to a different department, and Tooru didn’t let them put Suga in a wheelchair, he simply followed the orderly that led them, hefting him higher up in his arms, willing back the worried tears from his eyes. 

They seemed to know him in this department, the nurses acted with a strange familiarity and greeted him with worried notes of “Sugawara-kun!” and “Sugawara-kun we weren’t expecting you so soon, what happened?”

If Tooru had looked at Suga’s face he thought he would have seen worry, maybe a bashful resignation at having been caught in some deception. He hadn’t looked, only followed the orderly and now a nurse into a small room and deposited Suga on the thin mattress. 

Tooru never really heard the words, they wouldn’t tell him what was wrong, just sent him to the waiting room, and Suga had looked at him with pleading teary eyes and begged him to listen. 

He sat in the waiting room for six hours before they allowed him to see Suga. Part of him wondered how many strings Suga had to pull to get him inside, since he wasn’t family, but he didn’t care, he followed the nurse that led him with single minded determination, wringing his hands in front of him. 

Suga was smiling when he entered. His foot was elevated, not in a cast but in some sort of boot-like support that hid the bruising. It was almost easy to forget that they were in a hospital, that there was a longer story that nagged at the back of Tooru’s mind, that he didn’t know everthing. 

“Tooru, you’re still here.” He almost sounded surprised and Tooru did his best to smile back. 

“Yeah, I’m,” he didn’t have the words he needed. Instead he took Suga’s hand and Suga covered their hands with his other one. It felt comforting, like Tooru was the one who needed consoling, like Tooru was the one who was in pain. “Suga…” 

“I’m sorry.” Suga said, and let his smile drop. 

“For what?” Their hands were still together, Tooru could feel goosebumps prickling up his arms. 

“For not telling you, um, everything.” 

And then he did. 

It took a while, long enough that Suga was brought a meal, something bland and tasteless that he insisted Tooru share with him. This was something he’d had for the last six months, a disease that thinned his blood in places, thickened it in others. He got sick easier, bruises and scrapes could be life threatening. 

Tooru didn’t hear most of the words, so much of his knowledge came later, through the weeks he spent researching in his spare time, the nights he used to spend up late watching volleyball games filled instead with his laptop propped on his crossed legs and stress headaches forming behind his eyes. 

__

When Suga couldn’t leave the hospital for the next week, he tried to convince Tooru it was a normal part of healing, that he would be fine, that everything would go back to the way it had been. Tooru went to classes when he could, doing his homework by the side of Suga’s bed. He collected Suga’s assignments from his sympathetic instructors, they all seemed to have an idea that he was sick. Tooru didn’t know how he’d missed it.

When he couldn't leave the hospital for the next three weeks, Tooru couldn't be convinced that everything was going as planned.

"Are you feeling better?" He asked, struggling to keep himself from sounding impatient. It wasn't fair to Suga, to blame him for being sick, it wasn't fair to the hospital or the staff who tended to him daily, none of this was fair. 

"A bit, I should be good to walk soon, you know, they say it's any day." 

Tooru just nodded. They'd been saying 'any day' for a week now, but he couldn't let himself lose hope. Suga leaned over and took his hand. 

"You don't have to be here all the time, you know. I'm pretty good at keeping myself occupied." 

"I want to be here." Tooru answered automatically.

"Do you really?" The way Suga said it made it sound like he may have been asking himself, more than he was asking Tooru, an introspective tone confirmed by the way he looked down at their joined hands. 

"I want to be here." He said more firmly. 

"Okay. Thank you... for being here." Suga smiled, not as bright as before, maybe. It felt more fragile, like his teeth might crack at the impact of Tooru's gaze. 

__

He was there, as often as he could be, and, he told himself when he looked back, he was there when it counted. 

Tooru had gotten familiar with the normal hustle and bustle of the ward: the switching of nursing shifts, the low, urgent whispers that meant a patient had taken a turn for the worst, the occasional frustrated groan of a family member who had no way to help. 

He had made it his goal to know all the ward gossip. He spent the hours when Suga was sleeping, or having medical tests done, talking to all the nurses. They all smiled as he passed and waved, one particular night nurse brought him milk bread once, said she remembered it was his favorite. 

The flurry of activity wasn't necessarily unusual for this time of day, but the anxious looks the nurses shot him after each bout of whispers alerted him to the problem. 

"What is it?" He called, almost too loudly across the small room. 

"Just hold on, Oikawa-kun, we don't know yet." A nurse said, holding her hands out towards him, as if she would bodily stop him from passing. She couldn't stop him from moving past, dodging her outstretched hands and following the commotion towards Suga's room. 

It _was_ Suga's room, and, to him, it looked like chaos. The nurses flew in and out, doctors Tooru hadn't even seen before pressing instruments against Suga's wan skin, talking loudly about blood pressure and heart rate in matter-of-fact voices that sounded more like funeral tones than anything else. 

Tooru told himself it was good he was there, it was good even though Suga never got to say goodbye, at least he'd seen it, that way he could know it was true. He'd never had any problems believing in the improbable, he didn't need evidence to believe in fate, or aliens, or the idea of the human soul, but he knew that if he hadn't seen the heart monitor run flat, if he hadn't heard the doctor's words calling time of death he never would have let himself believe it. 

"I'm sorry, Oikawa-kun," A nurse said as she passed. She was friendly, normally smiling and smelled perpetually of baked goods despite working with antiseptic all day. She looked at him with the bizarre kind of pity reserved for a stranger in pain, an expression that says _"I care, but I'm glad it wasn't me."_ She clapped a hand against his shoulder and repeated. "I'm sorry." 

He learned later, from Suga's parents, that it had been a blood clot that was the final culprit. The delicate balance that the doctor's thought they had perfected, blood thin enough to not clot in his veins, thick enough to stop him from bleeding out from a bruise, had backfired, and when the clot reached his heart they were out of luck. 

Something the size of a house fly, large in the world of blood clots but tiny compare to the whole of the universe, had destroyed Tooru's life so completely that he didn't think the shattered pieces were worth the effort of gluing back together. 

It took him weeks, weeks of angry sulking, days when he could only cry, days when he couldn't cry and could only struggle to keep himself too busy to think, weeks before he could think of things in a different way.

Sugawara Koushi, insignificant in the lives of nearly 100% of the world's population had been responsible for at least 65% of Oikawa Tooru's tangible happiness for the greater part of five months. If percentages mattered, if Suga's impact was measured not by the scale of the universe, but by the scale of _Tooru's_ universe, then that tipped the scales differently. What was the weight of Sugawara Koushi's smile as their mouths moved too close together to see it? Did it weigh differently when it could only be felt against his lips? Tooru wondered how to measure the hundreds of unsaid _I love yous_ , and the ones that had only been felt. 

Maybe there was part of Tooru that wanted to go back, to live life backwards from the final meal of hospital rice they'd shared together until that first windy day in the park, but that part was growing smaller. 

He knew now that he'd always have these scales inside him, his universe always pointed towards Suga, but he could fill the opposing side now. Eventually, he would put his own lifetime of happiness on the opposite scale, weigh it against the staggering impact of their time together, and everything would come into balance.


End file.
